From the first-page moment when Silas drifts down the river into the horse trader's view [in Silas and the Black Mare], he commands a wary curiosity; and he continues to astound and to be astounded throughout his subsequent encounters…. The story ends with the full cast assembled for an auction of the mare on the one street of a mean, impoverished village; Bødker pulls off this climactic scene as adeptly as Silas does the recovery of his mount. The whole, highly original story is related with a degree of shrewd humor and an absence of moralizing interference that are still hard to come by in children's books.